I’m going to get really personal here and just start typing.. Lets start when I was in high school. Mainly my senior year, I felt like I had a certain imagine that I felt like I needed to put up with.. I never knew back then to be myself and to stop caring about peoples opinions. Back then, I didn’t have the confidence I have now. Yes I could work on my confidence, I still doubt myself a lot I’m not going to lie. But, here’s where it started. People from school would always comment on my outfits, telling me how well I dress, how good my hair and makeup always looked, and how well I carried myself as a person. What they really didn’t know was it was pretty much all a front. I didn’t want to get all glammed up Monday through Friday just to go to school and learn… Yes the compliments made me feel better about my appearance on the outside, but on the inside I felt fake. Senior year, we have this stupid yearbook thing where people vote for the funniest, most hilarious, prettiest, best dressed, and craziest people of the senior class, the list goes on and on. Honestly, I’m sure it made a lot of people that didn’t get picked feel like complete shit. A guy in my class and I got voted “Best Dressed” ha, imagine that. See instead of trying to make myself happy and “look” good, I wasn’t doing it for myself, I was doing it for the entire High school of Pocola. And this is why I felt fake. Honestly, there is not a day out of my years in high school I didn’t put extensions in. I got caught up with all the compliments and honestly let them get to me, to a point where I thought extensions made me feel prettier.. Looking back, I honestly can’t believe how much I relied on peoples comments about my appearance.
Today, I still struggle.. what I struggle most on is my weight.. July of this year, I lost over 10 pounds.. Everyone kept feeding me compliments saying wow you look so good or oh my god you look amazing.. then high school Catelynn let the compliments get to me again and felt so beyond pressured to keep all the weight off that I lost. What none of you know is how I lost that weight.. I may have looked better on the outside, but on the inside I have never felt so hurt and sickened in my life.. Depression is real. And it kicked my ass. What yall didn’t know was I would maybe eat once a day if that and when I did it would be Ramon noodles or just a slice of cheese. This went on for literally almost 2 months. I wasn’t myself anymore.. My fiancé and I had broken up.. I was hurt, sad and just kept asking myself why Catelynn.. I was in the darkest place of my life. Looking back at that today, I just honestly want to cry. But, it has built me up so much and made me the strongest women I’ve been in my entire life. If you would have asked me years ago about my thoughts of depression, I would have told you it wasn’t real. It was just all a mind thing. Well, let me tell you now that it IS REAL. It isn’t just a mind thing, it’s a dark place in millions of people’s lives.. Not just mine… Well, I gained all the weight back over a period of 5 months.. Sometimes, I feel like a disgusting person and wish I never put the weight back on.. But, what I was doing wasn’t healthy at all. Today I still down myself about my weight, but I truly know that my fiancé loves me for who I am, he doesn’t care that I’m not a size 2 and that I’m a size 12. He doesn’t care that I’m not 110 pounds. He loves me for simply who I am. With the help of God and knowing that God also loves me for who I am, I don’t care about the compliments anymore. I have learned that I need to give all my insecurities to God and let him deal with it. I am the happiest I have been in a very long time and I truly mean that. So with all this being said, I encourage everyone to love yourself for who you are and never, I MEAN NEVER feel like you have to have a certain image to impress and please people. Be true to who you are.. xoxoxo